Goldman’s earnings have allowed it to set aside $11.4 billion for bonus checks this year, 33 percent more than last year, USA Today reported Wednesday.

But a Rolling Stone article likened the firm to a great vampire squid.

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz at Columbia University said: Goldman’s activity is of negative social value. Its recent profits came from trading, which basically amounts to profiting from insider information at the expense of others.

Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein said, I believe in the high public purpose of what we do.

To its advantage, the bank raised $10 billion just as the financial crisis was unfolding last fall, in part due to a $5 billion investment from billionaire investor Warren Buffett. In addition, the federal government pressed it to take $10 billion in bailout funds, which it has already returned, with interest, to the government.